Tulsi Gabbard Quotes

Who takes the blame: the leader who talks of poverty but lives in luxury, or the poor who choose a leader of that type?

Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard.

In large commercial cities, the money power is, I fear irresistible. It is not by open corruption that it always, or even most generally, operates.

Today we have families that can buy a congressman and families that cannot buy food for the table.

There is growing inequality. The families of the all-powerful Ministers are getting richer. The poor and hard-working Belizeans are getting poorer.

I really don't think we've become a plutocracy, but I worry about the enormous influence that money has in a democracy such as ours.

Money doesn't just buy a nice car; it also buys better education or healthcare. Increasingly, it can buy impunity from justice, a pliant media, favorable laws, business advantage, and even elections. This, in turn, perpetuates the policies that allow a tiny elite to accumulate ever more wealth at the expense of the majority.

It should be no surprise that when rich men take control of the government, they pass laws that are favorable to themselves. The surprise is that those who are not rich vote for such people, even though they should know from bitter experience that the rich will continue to rip off the rest of us.

Lobbyists in Washington are making six figure salaries selling our government out to the corporate interests and we just sit and smile as if nothing is happening while the poor folks are getting poorer and their pharmaceutical bills rise.

Whenever the very rich hold views at odds with those of the entire population, the federal government tends to do the rich's bidding.

The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems.

I look at my people, and I look at those who control them - the political elite. And the sad thing is that the elites are just not interested in the welfare of the people.

Great wealth took possession of the government. It was reflected in Mr. Harding's selection of a cabinet.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.

The Occupy movement has drawn attention to how too many in the 1 percent get to play by their own rules while exploiting the 99 percent.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America.

Listen friends, you have to face the truth: You are never going to be rich... The system is rigged in favor of the few, and your name is not among them, not now and not ever.

Most governments do have inbuilt biases in favour of the rich and powerful, and most do contain plenty of manipulators who love intrigue, who have lost whatever moral compass they may once have had and who protect themselves with steely cynicism.

Every government that exists -- or ever existed, or ever will exist -- is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves". Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce.

It matters not one iota what political party is in power or what President holds the rein of office. We are not politicians, or public thinkers; we are the rich; we own America; we got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it if we can by throwing all our tremendous weight of our support, our influence, our money, our political connections, our purchased Senators, our hungry Congressmen, and our public-speaking demagogues, into the scale against any legislation, any political platform, any Presidential campaign that threatens the integrity of our estate.

We have more billionaires than any country but the United States. And Putin can imprison any one of them at a moment’s notice. Do you think he is poor?

Washington is rigged to favor people who have an army of lobbyists.

America’s super-elite has been particularly effective at using the tools of a political democracy to protect its minority privilege.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

After thirty years of a collapsing middle class,” he writes, “after thirty years of an economy designed to stack the deck in favor of the big guys; after thirty years of a political and constitutional system increasingly rigged to work for economic elites — after all this, the people revolted.